When the Lies get too Heavy

My daughter suggested I find a picture of myself when I was thin and hang it on the fridge to keep my weight loss goals on target. Just thinking of the skinny me makes me crave chocolate cake and glass after glass of milk.  

Skinny me. Sad me.  She didn’t lose weight to get thin. She stopped eating to get noticed. She might’ve taken to cutting if she hadn’t been so squeamish. Skinny me needed people to recognize that something was wrong, something so horrible, she lacked both the courage and vocabulary to describe it.

I didn’t give myself full permission to eat until years later when I became pregnant. Like anyone with a true love for sugar and fat, I packed on the pounds quite easily. Low and behold, there were benefits to being chubby, as least that’s what I told myself.  No one could pick me up off the street and stuff me in the trunk if I was heavy. Just being overweight would make me less attractive, and therefore less likely to be victimized, right? Wrong. Rapists target everyone from babies in diapers to elderly women confined to their beds. Rape isn’t about the short skirt I’d been wearing. It wasn’t about me “accidently” sending signals.

So how do I pull myself out of this false security of fat? How do I stop self-medicating with food?  I don’t have a clue. Sorry if I’ve disappointed you. My best guess is to stop buying into all the lies and propaganda. Fat shaming. Slut shaming. How can these possibly lead to anything healthy?  I’m thinking true weight loss has to stem from self love. What a challenge though, when even strangers are critical. I think the trick is to stop measuring success in pounds in inches. My new benchmark should be how good I feel in my own skin. I think today will be cake free! And I'm not even craving a soda.